31 July 2005: The Fortunes of Lal Faversham is on sale! This is the first-ever collection of the six "Lal Faversham" stories, unavailable since the 1920's, and never before collected in book form. Stirring adventures of the kind that made Sabatini famous, with an introduction by Jesse F. Knight. Visit our Adventure page for more information.

12 July 2005: We've finished the project to convert all our books to a full six formats. That's right: All our fiction is now available in (1) Acrobat/Adobe Reader (2) Microsoft Reader (3) Palm Reader (4) Mobipocket (5) HTML and (6) Palm DOC. And boy are our arms tired. Oh, yes, free trial versions in all six formats for all fiction books, too. And we'll be doing our non-fiction titles in new formats in a short while. Along with some new non-fiction books. Books with images. Books of short stories. Lost novels. Buy.

2 July 2005: Our Sabatini adventure books are all now available in three more formats: Mobipocket, HTML, and Palm DOC. But wait: There's more! They're also available as free trial versions in all six formats, so you can download them and compare formats, size, and appearance, and decide which ones you want to go with. Go to our Adventure page.

20 June 2005: The Lion's Skin is available for sale! We've been working behind the scenes here, which is another way of saying there were things that held up release of new books while we found new distributors and retailers, and some new ways to build books. We've got 'em. Look for more new titles in the coming months.

20 November 2003: Scaramouche is out! Buy it from the usual suspects.
Next up, Sabatini's The Lion's Skin, a romantic adventure in England. It's set just after the South Sea Bubble, and takes us into Jacobite plots to restore the banished King, with twists and turns, a beautiful maiden who knows her own mind (even if she gets carried away sometimes) and a sardonic semi-anti-hero with too many secrets.

11 November 2003: Scaramouche, in our usual excellent version, available this month. Watch for it!

5 November 2003: We went to the World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC. Took a side trip to the Library of Congress to copy their microfilm of ALL-STORY MAGAZINE to get the text for an upcoming collection of unreprinted Sabatini stories about the French Revolution. More about this later.

We also made a couple of arrangements for e-book reissue rights for books currently available only in hardcover from small press publishers. We'll tell you more when we have something we can talk about publicly.

October 2003: Did wemention that we are now the webhosting sponsor of the independent group of Rafael
Sabatini enthusiasts that hang out at RafaelSabatini.com? Check it out, survey says.

31 July 2003: In the next few days we introduce Sabatini's Captain Blood in Microsoft
Reader, Acrobat/PDF, and Palm Reader formats. We've been working hard toward this ever since we started doing the Adventure series. Don't take our word for it; read the first quarter of the book
for free. Check the Home page and/or the Adventure page for the latest updates.

15 July 2003: Work stop; time for fun. A new entry in
Funstuff is Frederick L. Allen's musings on the life changes indicated by classified "swap" ads in an adventure pulp of the early 1920's. It starts on solid ground and rapidly flies into dreamspace.
Have a laugh, our treat.

6 July 2003: OK, we've been working a lot, and now it's done. All the original titles and all of our
adventure books are available in Palm Reader format. There are even "TRY" sample versions of these books
so you can download a test case and see how you like them. Man, this was a lot like work. Buy
some books.

1 July 2003: In honor of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Grand Master" award we're reducing the price of her
three books by $2.00 each. Buy more copies and we'll keep the new lower price. Other hand taketh-ing, we
now ask $4.95 for each of the Sherman autobiographical volumes. (They're still free if you buy the CD-ROM
editions of some of our titles.)

20 May 2003: The Outlaws of Falkensteig is now available from our online store. Acrobat/PDF,
Microsoft Reader, HTML, or Palm DOC versions; $6.95 for any or all. Coming shortly: Palm Digital
Media version.

17 May 2003: We've been working assiduously, in a focused manner, head down to the grindstone,
and like all holy heck to bring you a veritable rucksack full of new e-books in the next few
months. We start with the first "new" Sabatini book in over a decade: the story collection
The Outlaws of Falkensteig, with an introduction by Sabatini scholar Jesse F.
Knight. We have a great cover for you, too; it's adapted from the original magazine
illustrations (1900) and hand-colored by Karen Schaffer in the style of contemporary engravings.

2 April 2003: Cleveland Public Library has ordered three of our e-books as test examples in
an on-site/remote "check-out" program developed by our distributor, Content Reserve. You can
read the details at CR's
website. We're psyched that they've chosen our books,
and hope it's just the first instance of a new approach to libraries with e-books.

29 March 2003: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has just been named horror writing's Grand Master by the
World Horror Convention. Way to go, Quinn! The award will be presented at WHC in Kansas City,
Missouri (held April 17th-20th, 2003). The list of previous Grand Masters, beginning with Robert
Bloch, is a guide to the greatest writers in the history of the field of modern horror writing.
Buy her books, including Hidden Knowledge's e-books
Magnificat, In the Face of Death, and Alas, Poor Yorick.

5 March 2003: We're about to release our third Rafael Sabatini book. Bardelys the Magnificent is
set in the early 1600's in the France of Louis XIII ("the Just") and it's great adventure and a grand old
love story.

We now have agreements with Sabatini scholar Jesse F. Knight for electronic editions of his two
collections of previously unreprinted Sabatini stories. The Outlaws of Falkensteig and
Camisade and Other Stories of the French Revolution will be out later this year in
our standard formats. Both books have never had mass editions; if you want a print copy you'll have to
pay hundreds of dollars (they were issued in editions of 35 and 75 copies each).

We've been quiet for a bit because we've been revamping our tech. We have new software for generating
Microsoft Reader titles, and we've improved the conversion process for HTML formats as well. This
will allow us to do some of our reissue series a bit more quickly and even more exactly perfect than
they already were. It's been kind of fun, actually.

February 2003: We're moving to a new web hosting company (there have been problems with the old one).
If there's a glitch in e-mail or the site becomes invisible for a daythat's why.

2 February 2003: We've been working hard! We now have e-books in the Palm "DOC" format;
the first one is Jim Killus' SunSmoke. As always, if you buy directly from us
you get any format, or all formats, with full freedom to put a copy on your second computer
(or PDA) or print out a copy.

20 January 2003: SunSmoke is out!
Go read about it, and buy a copy. As always, we
have a free samples for you to read: the first third of the book. Read the
samples. Then buy it.

4 December 2002: A Christmas present to all of you: Dreams of wealth untold. Well, actually, told
in detail in Arthur Train's "
The Spanish Prisoner," the fully deconstructed and totally out-of-control
reductio ad absurdum of this perennial scheme for gaining ill-deserved wealth.
Part of our Funstuff pages.

25 November 2002: We're in page proofs for James Killus' SunSmoke, first in our
science fiction reissue line. This novel was published by Ace in 1985, but has been out of print
for some years. Like the books in our "Originals" line, it crosses genre boundaries with the
majesty of indifference to walls, visiting high tech, martial arts, and fantasy. It's the only
fiction ever reviewed in the scientific journal Atmospheric Environment.

16 November 2002: Our second Rafael Sabatini novel, The Sea-Hawk, is now available at
our web storefront! As before, you can
read the first quarter of the book for free, and buy a copy in either Microsoft Reader or
Acrobat eBook/PDF format.

15 November 2002: The second volume of William Tecumseh Sherman's Memoirs, is now
available at
our web storefront. It's free! Fully edited and corrected for accuracy, and based on the final 1891
(4th) edition, it covers Sherman's career from the beginning of the Battle of Atlanta, through the
March to the Sea, the final surrender of the Confederate armies, and the years running the Army under
President Grant. Reading his own words is the only way you can start to understand this complex
character, a true American hero.

13 November 2002 (Update): We'll be at the following upcoming science
fiction / fantasy conventions; look for us there and we can show you
samples of the CD-ROMs and how the e-books look on a small Notebook computer:

21 October 2002: We've just introduced the first in our new line of Adventure e-Books, with
Love-at-Arms by Rafael Sabatini, the greatest swashbuckler of them all. You can
read the first quarter of the book for free, and buy a copy in either Microsoft Reader or
Acrobat eBook/PDF format,
at our web storefront
.

3 October 2002: We've just signed up as an affiliate of eBooks.com, which not only carries
our e-books, but maintains a huge catalog of e-books from other publishers as well.
Some prices discounted! Check them out.

28 September 2002: Alas, Poor Yorick is now available for sale! Go to
the Yorick pages to read about the book, and
buy it.

9 September 2002: ConJose (the World Science Fiction Convention, here in San Jose) was
a blast. Mike was on three panels discussing electronic and small-press publishing, and
got interviewed by the SAN JOSE BUSINESS JOURNAL. SJBJ ran the interview as part of
an article on the state of e-publishing, complete with a large picture of Mike holding
up the Yorick CD-ROM. You can read the
full article online (though they didn't include the picture), but first you'll have to
fill in the free registration forms.

We'll be at the following upcoming science fiction / fantasy conventions; look for
us there and we can show you
samples of the CD-ROMs and how the e-books look on a Sony Notebook:

15 August 2002: The Alas, Poor Yorick pages have gone live, which
means that the book is nearly ready for release for download sales. We'll have
CD-ROM copies for you at the Worldcon at the end of the month!

3 August 2002: Final schedule for the Worldcon in San Jose has been sent out.
Mike will be on two panels on e-book futures and methods, and one on small-press
publishing. Come to the program items and participate in the discussions. This
is your chance to ask questions about what we're doing, how, and why.

22 July 2002: The working typeset galley for Alas, Poor Yorick
has gone to Quinn Yarbro for final edits and corrections. We're on track for
release before Worldcon in San Jose.

15 July 2002: We're back from our whirlwind tour of Westercon and Readercon,
where Mike was on small-press and e-book panels at both conventions. A particular
highlight was the Readercon panel: really a dialogue with Rob Sawyer (past
president of SFWA) in which Rob and Mike
totally agreed on e-books as the future for specialty and genre publishing.

29 May 2002: The detailed military organization and battle casualty
Tables from Volume Two of Sherman's Memoirs are
now online. You can click on a thumbnail and download the full page image.
The thumbnails are captioned to correspond to the designators in the text.

28 May 2002: Volume Two of Sherman's Memoirs has been released. Check
out our Sherman web page for further information. Price: FREE!

8 September 2001: Amazon now carries both
Magnificat and
In the Face of Death as digital e-book downloads for the Microsoft Reader.
The Acrobat/PDF versions
are right behind them. Amazon says you can't use these on PDA's and handhelds, but they should
be just fine; we'll get that clarified this workweek. You can always buy them from us, of course,
and if you do we pass on more money to the author. (For books sold through our distributor,
such as these on Amazon, we only get 45% of the list price; this 55% discount is standard practice in
the book biz.) Next up: sales through Barnes&Noble.com, and a large number of direct web
sales locations.

5 September 2001: LIBRARY JOURNAL contacted us to confirm that our current books are
all originals, and not e-book reissues of earlier printed books. They'll have a review
of In The Face of Death this month. They reviewed
Strange Seas in August, but we haven't seen a copy yet.

2 September 2001: Sold a number of copies of the Face at the Worldcon, and
the advance reading copies of Strange Seas on CD-ROM got plenty of positive
comment. Dave Howell of Alexandria Digital Literature gave us a free plug on the Small Press
panel. We can supply the CD-ROM directly to you right now, if you pay by check or MO; price
$14.95 (U.S.)(plus shipping and applicable taxes);
write for info. It'll be in the web store
as soon as we can set it up there.

25 August 2001: The CD-ROM version of In the Face of Death is ready! We'll
have copies at the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia over Labor Day Weekend, and it will
be available from the web storefront beginning the second week of September.

Next up will be the CD-ROM version of Strange Seas.

20 August 2001: We've snuck a new title into the catalog! Reading
In the Face of Death got us to wondering what Sherman was really like,
so we read his Memoirs and his personal Home Letters. These were
so interesting that we decided to issue them (three volumes) as e-books. The first one is done!
Volume One of the Memoirs is now available in PDF and Microsoft Reader formats;
if demand exists we'll put it into HTML as well. The second volume will along later this
year, and the Home Letters a bit after that.

Like all important things this started out simple and got very messy. There is a public
domain version of the text of the Memoirs available from Project Gutenberg;
we thought could reformat it, do a nice
layout (like we always do), and reissue it as a real e-book. However, it is full of errors
and never should have been released as it was. [That didn't stop people from using it! There
are versions on the web even as we speak.]

So we gave it the full edit and proofreading process. Those of you who know publishing
will understand just what's involved in this. In the end we had to go back to the original
creator of the e-text to answer some questions; he was most helpful.

We're putting Volume One on the CD-ROM version of In the Face of Death, for free,
no charge, as part of the background information. We'll probably sell a three-volume package
of the two volumes of the Memoirs with the Home Letters, which do NOT exist in any
etext form. [In this case, we've scanned a copy of the book and will OCR and edit it
from scratch. So it will take a little extra work...]

16 August 2001: Take a look a the background information and links we've added for both
In
the Face of Death and
Strange Seas! We add new material to these, too, as
we find it.

7 August 2001: Our books are now listed in the e-book directory at
"Mind Like Water," a set of enterprises
which also wants to be an e-directory. Worth a look to see what you can find.

Also: Be it noted here that Alas, Poor Yorick will be Quinn's 70th published book.
Yes!

5 August 2001:
Bookpage has reviewed In the Face of Death, and given it a high marks:

"this superb historical novel full of insight and romantic drama..."

"In the Face of Death is strong fare indeed."

"Readers who embrace the heady hybrid of romance, history and horror will welcome a new novel by
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, the best-selling author of more than 60 novels, including the popular
Saint-Germain vampire series."

"And readers fascinated by the Civil War will devour In the Face of Death..."

[and, just in case you forgot]
"Quinn Yarbro thrilled readers with her first e-book offering, Magnificat,..."

2 August 2001: We've just reached agreement with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro to publish a third
novel. Alas, Poor Yorick is the inside story of the political
and family intrigues that Will Shakespeare chronicled in his play "Hamlet."
But now, after these many years, the truth will out, in the personal recollections
of Yorick the Fool (famed possessor of the most famous skull in all the history
of Drama). To be published in early 2002, in standard e-book formats.

July 2001: Hidden Knowledge has signed contracts with two major
e-book distributors. Look for us in the e-book sales (web) pages of Amazon, Powell's,
and other major e-book retailers. And don't forget that you can always buy our e-books
directly from our
web storefront.

June 2001: Jeff Ward will be
doing the CD-ROM cover and advertising art for Suzy
Charnas' e-book Strange Seas. Look for a poster advertising campaign
(especially at major SF/F conventions) and postcard and bookmark tie-ins. (AFAWK he's
not related to the Publisher, and got the job on merit.)

Underwriters help pay the bills. Click
on one of the buttons you find around the website and take a look; read
our unbiased commentaries; buy something and help fund this enterprise.

If it weren't for Peet's
Coffee we'd never wake up in the morning. We've been drinking
it here since the 1970's. Years ago, when I used to dream about living in the mountains
and writing obscure novels, only the absence of really, really good coffee (the kind I bought
at Peet's, ground from beans, and filtered with distilled water) held me back. One day Peet's
announced they would ship coffee anywhere in the U.S. I was forced to come to terms with
reality, and haven't left since. Peet's Coffee, grounding coffee drinkers since 1966.

Nov. 2002: Peet's has suspended their underwriting programs, but we're leaving the ad
here. Everything I said is still true, even if they don't pay us anything.